Bio Spectrum — May 2017

How do you analyse your journey in Bio-Rad?
I took my professional stint in Bio-Rad with 2-year
and 4-year achievable objectives. I joined the company
thinking that I will work here while I prepare for graduate
school. It is a good place to work and I was drawn to it as
they encouraged me to use the technical support, saying
that you can learn so many things and come to know of
all the operations. When we were part of the technical
support group, we were talking to customers every day.
Most of the day goes by helping people and it feels good.
And it kept me going. We had lots of new technologies
coming up then such as HPLC, capillary electrophoresis,
confocal microscopy. So, my experience for those four
years was like — We have a new technology, are you
interested in this? It felt really fulfilling and I loved
helping people all day long. I got a chance to do some
teaching as well as I had to explain to customers how our
product works. It took some talking for me to get into the
product development group but my friends who had
been a part of the technical support group thought this
was a good thing to go ahead with. I was assigned the
quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) project in

the late 90s and at that time it was a completely new

technology. So I was very excited about that. I miss that

routine of making people happy day to day but these

projects take time and you can see where things are

going. We used to hover over the instrument for each and

every data point initially. That was a very good experience.

It went for 10 years with different products and projects.

I had a chance to then join the protein group and worked

with them for 4-5 years. Now it has been almost 25 years

in Bio-Rad.

People you are working with are totally immersed in

this stuff. And when you get enough customer feedback,

it is all worth it. Now I don’t do product development

myself anymore, there is a team dedicated to it. My most

satisfying moments are talking to customers.

Are you missing your days in the technical

support group?

I still get to visit customers. But yes, I do miss those

days. I went back to a friend recently who is running the

technical support group in North America. I asked her to

put me on the phone with customers and she asked me

Shannon Hall

President, Life Science Group, Bio-Rad

‘Everybody

wants a good

pay. But it

is most

important to

do good

science’

For Shannon Hall, being a part of Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc (Bio-Rad), the

65-year-old organisation that is engaged in the development and production of

specialty chemicals used in biochemical, pharmaceutical, and other life science

research applications, is both exciting and challenging. Speaking to BioSpectrum,

Hall, the company’s President of Life Science Group, shares her career lattice and

career development as the company’s President of Life Science Group

http://www.biospectrumindia.com | May 2017 | BioSpectrum BIOTalk^35